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Merchants' fear of AI shopping agents a 'hallucination' – international study finds

Tuesday, July 21, 2026 — 16:32:47 (UTC)

Merchants’ fear of AI shopping agents is just a ‘hallucination’, four-wave international study finds

Concluding report in PSE Consulting’s four-wave international study finds AI agents are reshaping how consumers shop - but not who they trust to sell to them

LONDON, ENGLAND, 21 July 2026 – Merchants' fear that AI shopping agents will cut them out of the sale is, for now, a ‘hallucination’, according to the concluding report in PSE Consulting's international study of 4,250 consumers across the UK, US, France and Germany. Nine in ten consumers (89%) say recognising the seller’s brand is important or very important when acting on an AI recommendation and 92% say customer reviews are a deciding factor - the same trust signals that have always governed purchasing decisions, now applied to a new discovery channel.

That anxiety has a live flashpoint. Amazon's lawsuit against Perplexity AI - which accuses the startup's Comet browser of disguising AI agents as human shoppers to buy on its site - has been read as the opening shot in a war over who controls the checkout button when AI does the shopping, crystallising a fear now spreading through merchant boardrooms. PSE Consulting's research suggests that framing overstates the threat.

The findings suggest that while AI agents are increasingly shaping the shortlist of products consumers consider, they are not displacing the merchants, marketplaces and brands consumers ultimately trust to complete the sale. Consumers continue to favour established marketplaces for fulfilment, even as they lean on advertising-funded AI tools to get there - 90% say their use of retail and travel marketplaces will stay the same or increase as AI adoption grows, and just one in ten expect to rely on them less.

PSE Consulting commissioned the research specifically to test where consumers place themselves in the "merchants vs agents" contest now playing out in courtrooms and industry commentary, and whether merchant anxiety about disintermediation is borne out by actual shopping behaviour. Our research indicates that merchant anxiety is misplaced. Just 14% of consumers say they simply follow an AI assistant's top recommendation - fewer than half the 32% who cite price as their primary decision driver - underlining that most are using AI to compare offers, not to delegate the decision itself.

"The fear that AI agents will simply cut merchants out of the transaction is, on the evidence of our research, a hallucination," said Chris Jones, Managing Director at PSE Consulting. "Consumers are using AI to build a shortlist, not to transfer their loyalty to buying from the agent. The Amazon-Perplexity case is really a fight about who owns the discovery layer - it is not evidence that shoppers have stopped caring who they buy from."

He added: "That doesn't mean merchants can relax. The competitive battle has moved upstream, into the AI discovery layer itself. But the idea that agents are about to replace the merchant relationship altogether isn't what consumers are telling us."

What it means for merchants: Retailers don't need to fight AI agents for the sale - they need to fight for a place in the shortlist. Consumers heavily favour independent AI assistants such as ChatGPT or Gemini for discovery (74%) over tools embedded in a single retail platform (10%), which means visibility increasingly depends on how well product, pricing and trust data are represented to third-party AI systems, not just to human shoppers on-site. Brand and review signals remain a merchant's strongest asset once the shortlist is built: 68% of consumers say they'll consider a seller an AI recommends but don't already know, provided they can check reviews and ratings first. The one soft spot is loyalty - in the UK, 36% of consumers say losing loyalty points would put them off using AI shopping tools altogether, more than double the rate in Germany (14%), a reminder that existing loyalty ecosystems still carry real commercial weight.

What it means for PSPs, acquirers, issuers and schemes: The Amazon-Perplexity dispute isn't a preview of some future problem - it's a symptom of one that already exists. Today's risk isn't an algorithm acting alone with delegated authority; it's AI agents operating in a human-in-the-loop model that fraudulent actors are already exploiting - bots disguised as human shoppers, fraudulent listings and reviews gaming their way onto shortlists. Authentication, dispute resolution and liability frameworks are being tested now: PSPs and issuers need to know whether a transaction was initiated by a human or a bot acting on their behalf, and merchants need better tools to verify who they're actually selling to. Transaction volume isn't migrating away from existing rails, but the accountability question at the point of purchase is already live.

What it means for AI agent platforms: A tiered market is emerging - free, advertising-supported assistants for the mainstream and premium, impartial alternatives for a smaller, quality-conscious segment. 43% of consumers say they're happy to use a free assistant even if its recommendations are shaped by advertising, against 27% who'd rather pay for a fully impartial one but that tolerance has a ceiling: 40% say advertising reduces their trust in AI recommendations, rising to 48% in the UK and to 50% among over-55s. As litigation like Amazon's puts agentic commerce under a legal and public spotlight, providers will face growing pressure to show how they calibrate trust and represent merchants fairly.

The full findings are set out in PSE Consulting's whitepaper, The Shortlist Economy - How AI is Rewiring Buying Habits (and How Merchants Can Respond), published today and free to download here.

PSE Consulting will explore the findings in more depth at a live webinar, also titled The Shortlist Economy - How AI is Rewiring Buying Habits (and How Merchants Can Respond), on Tuesday 28 July at 4pm BST, free to attend. Registration is available here.

*Source: This online survey of 4,250 Adults in UK, France, Germany and US who use AI for online shopping was commissioned by SkyParlour on behalf of PSE Consulting and conducted by market research company OnePoll, in accordance with the Market Research Society's code of conduct. Data was collected between 05/03/2026 and 18/03/2026. All participants are double-opted in to take part in research and are paid an amount depending on the length and complexity of the survey. This survey was overseen and edited by the OnePoll research team. OnePoll are MRS Company Partners, corporate membership of ESOMAR and Members of the British Polling Council.

ENDS

About PSE Consulting

PSE Consulting is a leading global provider of payment advisory services to players across the payments landscape. PSE’s expertise has enabled it to deliver actionable market insights and operational optimisation to senior payments leaders for over 30 years.

To learn more, visit: pseconsulting.com/

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Source: Company press release.

Categories: Reports and research